The Northern sky is darkening. The wild Atlantic gathering into peaked ridges and foamy explosions of spume. From its vantage on the sheer basalt cliffs, Dunluce Castle watches the storm front approach, settling deeper into its rocky foundations as the clouds crackle and smoulder with distant lightning. Amongst the thick stone bricks of the North Easterly tower, Maeve Roe McQuillan gives a shiver as rising from the cliffs below comes the black wind of the Sidhe, the keening wail of a banshee. Tonight someone will die.
The only daughter of Lord McQuillan, she is the lady of the castle, this tower her lady’s bower; yet the young face is pale and drawn. Her choice to love the wrong man keeps her a prisoner, and until she marries her father’s kinsman, Rory Óg, she will be imprisoned here. Everyday her father visits her to ask if she has changed her mind, and everyday she gives him the same answer, “I’d prefer prison or death”, and turns back to her sewing. By the end of the second week, he’d finally recognised she was sewing a white dress, and made to return her the keys. “Your bridal gown?” He asked satisfied, but Maeve stared steadily at the wall and replied, “No, it is my shroud.” In a fury he threw a broom at her, “enjoy sweeping your own rooms then. If you do not wish to become a lady, you can make do without servants!” and left, slamming the door behind him. He had not visited since.
Remembering her bitter words on this stormy night, Maeve raises the gown from her lap. It is finally finished. Simply cut, white, it does look like a bridal gown, and yet.... She thinks of the banshee’s warning cry. The dress before her that is white as a shroud, white as a corpse. She puts it on and stands in the centre of the chamber, a haunting and haunted figure, while outside the wind howls and rain begins to fall. With another huge blast of wind the oak door bursts open and the candles surrounding pale Maeve flicker, the fire flaring up the small chimney. In the doorway stands a dishevelled stranger; wind blown, dripping. Then they draw back their hood, and Maeve starts with a cry.
Reginald O’Cahan. Young, handsome, a clansman of the McQuillan’s bitterest rivals, and not a stranger, but a lover. The very one for whom Maeve had turned down Rory Óg. A prisoner until a few short months ago, Reginald’s days behind his enemy’s walls were spent plotting his escape, and yet, unwittingly falling in love with the maiden who furtively passed stolen kitchen leftovers through the bars without her father's knowledge. Love blossomed. The one person he could not have, nor she him. Now, after months apart he stands in the doorway to the tower as the storm rages around them, a powerful figure with smiling eyes. He holds up a large iron key and grins.
“Seems your guards are less loyal when there is coin about.”
Aye, it is a romance for the storybooks. A young couple so in love they would risk and leave everything. Hidden by the storm they flee deep below the castle, through the dark and winding passageways that lead to Dunluce’s best kept secret; the Mermaid’s Gate. A great cavern, wave-hewn from the dark rock, it has been used by smugglers and armies, kings and prisoners. Tonight it is Maeve and Reginald who struggle across the seaweed slick rocks, boarding the small row boat that is their passage to Portrush. Yet even in this sheltered inlet the water is swirling, the darkness beyond surging against the surrounding cliffs, and Maeve’s hands upon the stern grow white knuckled as Reginald wades them deeper into the seething water. The small boat is quickly caught and dragged out into the stormy night, the thin oars and Reginald’s straining arms powerless against the raging tide.
Above, the castle’s inhabitants watch from high in the battlements, Lord McQuillan‘s face changing from anger, to fear to desperation as he recognises the glimpses of white amongst the storming waves. Maeve’s words sounding in his mind; my shroud, my shroud, as helplessly he watches the boat overturn, the futile attempts of the young couple to cling to one another amongst the black water, and then...nothing.
The next morning, as dawn breaks wind-scoured and grey, searching castle soldiers find Reginald’s body washed upon the shore. However Maeve‘s body does not return from the sea. Her father pleads and weeps, but the Sea refuses to give back the body, her white dress the only shroud Maeve is destined to ever wear.
Yet the sea could not hold her wild spirit, and it is said that a woman in white now haunts the tower in which Maeve was imprisoned, the ‘Dread tower’, sweeping the floor and weeping over her dead lover. Sometimes she is seen on the cliffs beside the castle at sunset. She is always gazing out to sea, bare feet grazing the slender sea-pinks as she searches for her lover’s soul and watches for western clouds carrying another storm to her beloved Dunluce.
To that lone crumbling tower, Once a fair lady's bower,
Comes in the midnight hour, That hapless spirit.
Mourn for the Lady Maeve, Mourn for her wind and wave,
Naught but a sea cold grave, Did she inherit.'
Sir John Ross, 1836
Why the ‘Mermaid’ cave?
Despite the widespread agreement that the large cavern below Dunluce is known as the Mermaid cave or gate, no one seems able to give a reason or origin for this name. Unsatisfied, I decided to do some digging and discovered from an old periodical that a mermaid was believed by locals to live in the cave. Every night she was said to frequent the waters surrounding Dunluce castle, and during the day could sometimes be seen lounging on the rocks, combing her long black hair.
In the way of Folk-Lore, all the locals seemed to know someone, or know someone who knew someone else, who had seen the mermaid sitting on the rocks under the castle- sometimes for as long as three minutes! In Scotland certainly, sea caves on the north west coast where viewed to be inhabited by mermaids, so it seems likely the same belief was held about the one at Dunluce. Whether the mermaid is a guardian of the castle or merely a neighbour is unclear, but considering the sightings it is definitely worth keeping an eye out for glimpses of a scaly tail in the waters below if you visit...
Copyright of the above written story of Mermaid's Gate belongs to Scarlett McQuillan (Boho Silver). and all or part may not be reproduced without permission and attribution.
References:
Blind, Karl. "SCOTTISH, SHETLANDIC, AND GERMANIC WATER TALES." The Contemporary Review, 1866-1900 40, (09, 1881): 401.
https://emeraldisle.ie/the-haunting-of-dunluce
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